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Recruitment Ideas

MDSDF — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:03:00 GMT

Late summer is that time of year when we try to gather up all of our friends and neighbors to start new square dance classes. As our numbers diminish, it's important that we all make an effort at recruiting new club members. What has been successful for your club? Perhaps if we share ideas we can connect with a few more potential new dancers. I will report what our club has tried recently.

For many years Tom Thumb Squares has done an hour-long demonstration at the Howard County Fair. It's always well received and good general publicity, but only occasionally do we connect with new dancers through that event. Our postings in county publications have also brought us a few new dancers, and at least one couple found us through this website. Our best recruitment by far is through new dancers who bring their friends the next year.

We have several large employers in our area; we have not figured out how to connect with their employees through the workplace. We have posted on craigslist without any success, but we will try that again. We've posted our class schedule on this website, and distributed flyers far and wide. We'll know the results in September.

How have other MDSDF clubs brought in new people?

John Blaisdell

My Doris Experience

MDSDF — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:33:00 GMT

My only interaction (and I think you will enjoy this) was when I (unmarried at the time) said I would try round dance lessons. I really tried. I was able to do a grand total of one ( you read that right) dance. She would always look at me and say something to the effect "Okay Terry, this is the one you can do", and we would laugh and smile.

When she would call for a "basketball turn", I would teasingly make motion with my hands and in a soft voice say "TWO". She would give me the stern look--almost like a mom silently scolding her son. We would laugh about it later.

I just think that for all that she has done for the round dance and the square dance community, we should say "Thank You" and tell everyone how she really loved what she was doing.

Terry T

Welcome

MDSDF — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:04:12 GMT

Welcome to the MDSDF blog.

This blog is exclusively for discussion of square and round dance topics. Comments are welcome.

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